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Filtering by Category: movies

Skyfall-In: The Education of Sam Mendes

Chris Klimek

Thunderball (1965)

Thunderball (1965)

I wrote about Skyfall, the new James Bond movie, over at NPR Monkey See. The piece is basically my apology to director Sam Mendes for having expected him to screw this thing up. Gently Mendes-dissing line I wish I'd written: In his Skyfall review at Grantland, Zach Baron described Mendes as "taking a break from plastic-bagging the American Dream in Revolutionary Road and American Beauty to shred the enduring illusions of his native country instead."

Skyfall was partially shot in Istanbul, as was my favorite entry in the half-century-old 007 film series, 1963's From Russia with Love. I contributed some thoughts on why 007 No. 002 is still No. 001 in my book to critics' polls at Criticwire and DCist last week.

Making-of documentary The Furious Gods reveals the people who actually made Prometheus had no idea WTF, either.

Chris Klimek

Because I routinely make awful decisions about how to spend my time, I paid $24.99 (50% of MSRP) for the four-disc, 3D Blu-Ray edition of Prometheus, a film I'd harbored huge hopes for but ultimately found disappointing. A Ridley Scott film, in other words.

I don't have the gear or the inclination to watch a 3D movie at home, but the deluxe set that includes the 3D version of Prometheus (along with the plain-Jane 2D in three different formats, because what price piece of mind?) is the only way to get The Furious Gods, a three-hour, 40 minute (!) making-of documentary by Charles de Lauzirika, a nonfiction filmmaker whose substantive, well-edited making-ofs for similarly lavish reissues of Scott's only two great films -- say their names with me now, everybody, Alien and Blade Runner -- have already claimed many irreplaceable hours of my life.

The Furious Gods is long, sure, but actually it's longer, because I've been watching in "enhanced mode," meaning that when an icon appears at the top of the screen I can press a button on my remote and watch an "enhancement pod" -- a video footnote, basically -- containing even more nerdily trivial information about whatever specific aspect of the film's conception and production is being discussed at that moment.

When Scott talks about casting original Dragon Tattoo Girl Noomi Rapace in the movie, you can watch her screen test. When production designer Arthur Max talks about creating the movie's titular spacecraft (which was still called the Magellan for a long time, did you know, even after the Untitled Alien Prequel acquired the name Prometheus), you can click through dozens of drawings and schematics of the ship -- which I think that all of us, regardless of our political affiliation, can agree is fucking rad. You can even watch an enhancement pod about the film's many rejected titles. Alien: Tomb of the Gods, anyone?

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